MAGpie reboot: new, free caption-authoring software from WGBH’s NCAM

Speaker(s)

Bryan Gould, Director , WGBH/NCAM

Session Details

Length of Session: 1-hr

Format:

Expertise Level: Not provided

Type of session: General Conference

Summary

The National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH (NCAM) is currently developing CADET (Caption and Description Editing Tool). CADET is free, downloadable caption authoring software that will enable anyone to easily produce high-quality caption files that are compatible with any media player on any web browser.

Abstract

The CADET software will build on the original success of NCAM's now out-of-date caption-editing tool, MAGpie (Media Access Generator), whose thousands of users proved that a free, high-quality tool will find widespread adoption by individuals or institutions, especially in education and government.

CADET will implement much of the functionality available only in high-end caption authoring workstations, such as WYSIWYG placement, timing assistance, multiple export formats covering the most used timed-text file types, keyboard shortcuts, and other such features. Unlike other captioning tool creators, NCAM has a unique insight into the needs of caption writers, due to WGBH’s long history in creating captions and developing captioning tools.

Providing this free, high-quality caption editor will make it easy for all content creators, from education to entertainment, to provide captions on all of their online videos.

Learn more about CADET and how try it out for yourself.

Keypoints

WGBH, with 45 years of captioning experience, is developing free captioning software that you can help improve

Key features of CADET: how users will be able to author and publish captions with this free tool

Captions have a large and diverse audience and can also provide additional benefits for video producers

Topic Areas

Speaker Bio(s)

Bryan Gould

Bryan Gould, NCAM Director of Accessible Learning and Assessment Technologies. Over the past 20 years, Bryan has led research, authored guidelines and developed training programs on how best to present images and multimedia to students who are blind or have low vision. He continues to spearhead efforts to develop standards-based methods of embedding short and extended image descriptions in digital books, online curriculum, and online high-stakes assessments. He also contributes to a diversity of projects ranging from general web accessibility to developing caption and description authoring tools.